Cyberpunks, high tech and low life; why not incorporate it into your World of Darkness repertoire? The straight World of Darkness protagonist always was a monstrous anti-hero living at the fridge of society just as any Gibson or Stephenson hero. This is one of two science fiction-themed supplements to World of Darkness: Mirrors, material that had to be cut due to space constraints from their chapter entitled “Shards” which offered genre hacks for the World of Darkness system.

Bleeding Edge describes two cyberpunk sub-settings to craft games around. Both feature alienation as a central theme, casting the characters as outsiders. In Tomorrow Country technology is the alienating factor in the form of information technology and virtual reality. Think Kathryn Bigelow’s “Strange Days”. Metalground is the second scenario. Technology hasn’t pushed you out, people did; powerful people, bad people. This setting makes good use of The Man as the ever-present cyberpunk antagonist. Money and power keep the wealthy insulated form an ever growing underclass, but they still need scoundrels to do their dirty work.

There are a lot of interesting hacks in Bleeding Edge for creating a cyberpunk atmosphere. Your World of Darkness campaign might start to feel more like Shadowrun. In fact, the character section includes the Origins and Roles merits that when applied can shape your party into a decent shadowrunning troupe. There is a Plugins merit that does a good job providing simple plug-and-play rules for incorporating cyberware and biotech. In fact, it is not really a set of rules more than it is examples of how to create technologic gadgets for your characters without unbalancing gameplay. “Mirrors” is a toolbox sourcebook, so a typical bloated chapter on different shiny weapons one can buy would have been boring and defeating the point. The controversial morality system (which has seen its share of boosters and detractors over the years) is revisited. You can exchange Morality for Alienation to easily simulate the cynical nature and deadly atmosphere of the cyberpunk genre.

There are some very good tips for portraying megacorporations and artificial intelligences in your chronicle, and more importantly how to avoid portraying them wrong. Back in Vampire: the Masquerade there was always the assumption ancient and incredibly powerful vampires were out there secretly pulling the strings, everything and everyone were just game pieces in their competition with one another. Megacorps should be portrayed in the same fashion. You can design a modified character sheet for a corp complete with virtue and vice, motivations and strengths. Having stats on a sheet to remind you they are the disembodied meta-characters upon which the plot pivots will keep you from falling into the trap of having them be the corporate Satan doing evil just for evil’s sake. They should have goals and motivations just like the old unseen vampire lords. Like immensely complex beings they careen through the plot destroying characters heedlessly. Some of the same concepts are true for AIs. There in intriguing passages on how to use rules and themes from The Book of Spirits when dealing with an AI.

The one thing I am left missing is an overview of how the change in setting affects all the game lines. A few are touched on, such as the hunter groups Network Zero and Task Force VALKYRE having a renaissance with the ubiquitous information technology infrastructure and data mining capability. But what would a cyberpunk Changeling or Mage campaign look like? How would it fundamentally change these monsters differently than the average human? Of all the game lines that could benefit from a cyberpunk setting it is Promethean: the Created that reaps the most rewards. With artificial intelligence, cloning, simulated humanity as well as reality as a motif you can really give your created characters a lot of Philip K. Dick-inspired psychological angst. In fact, I don’t think I would like to play Promethean without including Bleeding Edge.

While Bleeding Edge focuses on the cyberpunk near future, its sister project Infinite Macabre provides a space opera backdrop. A clever Storyteller could use these two products in tandem, sort of like how White Wolf’s parent company now offers the EVE Online space-faring strategy game as well as the planet-based first person shooter spinoff Dust 514. ( )